I Am Bruce Lee Page #5

Joe would throw 1,000 side kicks a day.

Listen, Joe Lewis, in today's world,

he would have learned all that sh*t

and been just as bad as he was

back in the day.

Bruce didn't think point karate,

point martial arts competition,

was valuable at all,

and I totally disagreed with him.

Bruce watched it

but didn't believe in it.

He always advocated

full-contact sparring.

Bruce Lee looked at all of that

and said, "This is not martial arts. "

"This is nonsense.

Let's get rid of these rules. "

I respect that he didn't feel like

he wanted to compete

because it wasn't real combat.

He says you're not fighting

for yourself or expressing yourself.

You're fighting for the judges,

the referee, the rules.

What's the reality of combat? There's

someone who wants to beat you down.

He said to learn to swim,

you cannot swim on land.

You gotta get in the water.

To learn to fight, you gotta fight.

Can you break five or six pieces of wood

with your hand or your foot?

Boards don't hit back.

I'll probably break my hand and foot.

He had high regard

for those martial artists of the day

that were winning tournaments.

He just had a different philosophy

about martial arts and actual fighting.

I do not believe in styles any more.

I mean, I do not believe

that there is such thing

as like a Chinese way of fighting

or the Japanese way of fighting

or whatever way of fighting.

Because if you don't have styles,

if you just say, "Well, here I am,

you know, as a human being,

how can I express myself

totally and completely?"

Now, that way, you won't create a style,

because style is a crystallisation.

I mean, that way it's a process

of continuing growth.

He called his institute

Jun Fan Gung Fu.

We were riding in a car and he mentioned

what he enjoyed in fencing

was the stop hit.

Bruce didn't have any passive blocks.

His blocks were a strike.

Bruce took the stances from the stances

that you see in Western fencing.

Instead of just block and then hit,

it's done simultaneously.

He says we wanna intercept

his physical motion and his thought.

It's almost like fencing. You see

this capture? That's the capture.

And that's why he said, "I'm gonna call

my new method the intercepting way

or the intercepting fist. "

Come on, touch me. Any way you can.

To reach me, you must move to me.

Your attack offers me an opportunity

to intercept you.

And they said, "What do you call that?"

He says, "We call thatjeet kune do. "

In Cantonese, jeet kune do.

Then it was Dan who says,

"Acronym would be JKD."

And Bruce Lee said, "I like that. "

- The way of the intercepting fist.

- Intercepting fist?

It sounds Chinese, but it's very much

an American martial art.

Jeet kune do

was how can I most efficiently

directly end a moment of combat?

The philosophy

Bruce Lee had was:

The simpler the better,

the most effective, the direct line.

- The other stuff was Hollywood.

- It can be taught.

- Do you understand?

- But it cannot really be standardised.

And that's not to say

that it can't be passed on.

But it was very personal to him.

All the wannabes, all the imposters

who put up jeet kune do signs

on their school building,

and they have no idea

whatjeet kune do is.

They think it's a style.

I don't know if he'd be dojo-busting

in his days, but that would upset Bruce.

Bruce Lee has the big middle finger

raised toward any form of authority.

All kinds of dogmas,

all kinds of traditions.

He's saying a big "screw you"

to all of them.

This guy was preaching back in the '60s

you shouldn't stay to one style.

No one style is the best.

Have a piece of everything.

In 1968 he says,

"JKD in '69 will be different. "

I said, "This is really good stuff

we're doing now. "

He says, "JKD in '69 will be different.

JKD in 1970 will be different. "

Martial arts has evolved more

in the last ten years

than it has in the last 10,000 years,

because all the stuff

that Bruce Lee talked about

and his philosophies and things

that he believed were finally proven

and now this new martial art

was able to start to grow and evolve.

Our main event,

for the light heavyweight title,

here we go!

You talk about Chinese boxing. How does

it differ from, say, our kind of boxing?

Well, first we use the feet.

Second to none.

And then we use the elbow.

Oh! Beautiful elbow!

- Do you use the thumb too?

- You name it, man, we use it.

- You use it all.

- You have to.

Because that is the expression

of the human body.

I mean, the... everything,

I mean, not just the hand.

The crazy thing about martial arts is

people debate and fight over this stuff.

There's no debate.

Bruce Lee is definitely the father

of mixed martial arts.

I do think there's a correlation there,

but it's not that jeet kune do

is the same thing as MMA.

If Dana White says Bruce Lee

is the father of mixed martial arts,

I would say

he's one of the earliest ones,

but Gene LeBell

is the father of mixed martial arts.

In 1963 you'll see Gene defeating

Milo Savage, a professional boxer.

Well, Bruce wasn't into

mixed martial arts in 1963.

As I was choking him,

he grabbed my hand and started to bite,

and I said, "Milo, you bite my hand,

I'm gonna take your eye out. "

He opened his mouth,

I pulled my hand out and I choked him.

And he was out, like, for 22 minutes.

Gene LeBell taught Bruce Lee

grappling moves.

I'd throw him and flip him

and he'd land on his feet.

Then he'd spin,

do a crescent kick on me

or do a judo throw.

And he was a magnificent athlete.

If you're gonna say father

of mixed martial... it's gotta be Bruce.

He's before anyone else.

He's the first one who decided

to put it all together.

He had the little shorts on, too.

That's as close as he could get to what

the UFC and the MMA was 25 years later.

In 1947,

kajukenbo was the first

to put all these different martial arts

in one title:

Karate, judo, kenpo, boxing.

Like Bruce Lee, they put

all these practical things together

but kajukenbo had it first.

I agree with Dana White.

He is one of the pioneers

of mixed martial art.

The reality is, everybody has been

a part of this evolution,

from Benny "the Jet" Urquidez

to Joe Lewis to all these guys,

to Joe Lewis the boxer, too,

and the list goes on and on and on.

When the UFC came in,

they weren't talking about Bruce Lee.

- They were talking about Royce Gracie.

- Royce Gracie!

The Gracies were a piece of that too, a

piece of the history of not only the UFC

but of the martial arts evolving.

For a while

they owned those competitions.

There's the tag.

What the Gracies did was they took

the ground game, the submission game,

and really refined it

to a whole other level.

Bruce would have loved

Brazilian jiujitsu.

I think if he saw the Gracies,

he would have studied.

He really embraced wrestling

and he really embraced judo.

The difference

between the Gracies and Bruce Lee

is Bruce Lee was never

stuck and married to one thing.

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